Drops of Jupiter
by Mara202
Summary: Wherein Harry and Blaise are testing a new spell and get into lots of weird situations involving aliens and a minor scandal. Harry Potter/Blaise Zabini cracky slash. Complete.
1. Prologue

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Rating:** PG-13 for the occasional swear word; otherwise fairly harmless.

**Pairing:** Harry/Blaise (boy!Blaise, obviously)

**Word count: **1,250 / 17,000

**Warnings/classifications:** Slash, crack, cameos by Team Torchwood (post-S2), Jake Simmonds (_Doctor Who_) and a few characters from Julian May's _Galactic Milieu_ series (Best. Books. _Ever_.). References to _10 Things I Hate about You_ (very, very vague), _Star Wars_ and _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.

**Summary:** In which Harry and Blaise are chased by 'Ewoks' and everybody thinks they're sleeping together, but they're actually not.

**Author's notes: **It took me three and a half years to finish this fic. I started writing it when I got stuck on the sequel to _Starlight_ (which I still haven't even really started writing on), but then this one developed a plot and I got stuck on this one, too. Fortunately I always get very inspired when I should really be doing other things (like studying for exams and writing my thesis), haha. Parts of this story (most notably 'water' and 'Ewok' in chapter 3) were originally written for the **100quills** challenge (in 2006...).

The story takes place a few years after _Deathly Hallows_, when Harry is working at the Ministry of Magic as an Auror and Blaise as a Spell Developer. The time line isn't quite right, because following the _Harry Potter_ time line, this story should take place in 2002 (more or less), whereas the _Torchwood_ parts and the epilogue would place it in 2008. (If you've never watched _Torchwood_, don't worry. All you need to know is that they're an organisation ("outside the government, beyond the police") that catches aliens.)

If you're interested in the backstory: there's also a prequel ("_In which Blaise turns out to be not just a good teacher, but also a very good kisser_") and at some point in the future there might also be an in-between-quel ("_In which everything goes to hell_").

Lots of thanks to **moonshadow_nal** for beta-reading the final version and **gabo0** for beta-reading an earlier version quite a while ago.

**::**

**Prologue**

"_Potter_?" he exclaimed. "You can't be serious."

His boss, Amelia Smith, a witch who seemed strangely young for a Department Head, looked at him severely and Blaise knew he'd gone too far. "_Zabini_. Now is not the time for that old Gryffindor/Slytherin nonsense. You're working with him and that's it."

"But, ma'am -" Blaise began, pleadingly.

"Not a _word_, Zabini. Set a date with him _today_ or I'll make you do the debugging for the rest of the Department for a month."

Blaise loved his job at the Department of Magical Development, but a month of debugging rune structures would drive even him insane. "Yes, ma'am," he muttered, defeatedly.

In order to vent his frustrations, he went to seek out Daphne. She'd been one of his best friends during their time at Hogwarts, and their group still frequently hung out.

"I take it you're not thrilled with your partner," Daphne commented, as he literally stormed into her cubicle at the Department of International Magical Cooperation.

"You won't _believe_ this," Blaise seethed, stalking through the rather confined space of Daphne's cubicle before finally moodily flopping down onto the chair opposite her.

Her eyes widened slightly. "Potter?"

"Bingo. Just my luck," he muttered darkly. "Of all Aurors! Even Weasley would've been better! Well, no, not really," he amended after a second's thought. "Weasley would probably try to kill me."

"Have you spoken with him at all, since..." she began tentatively, trailing off.

He scoffed. "Ha. You clearly underestimate my avoidance skills."

Daphne tried to stifle a chuckle, but didn't completely succeed. "So what now?"

"I have to 'go to Harry and set a date'," Blaise quoted his boss. "_Today_. Or she'll make me do the debugging for the rest of the department for a _month_."

"You still call him Harry," she observed, looking at him.

His eyes shot up from the piece of paper he'd been staring at and met her steady gaze, before he looked away uncomfortably. "Old habits die hard," he said, shrugging in what he hoped looked like a natural way.

"Want to go out with me and Theo tonight? My mum's babysitting Cas," Daphne asked, changing the subject. She seemed to have decided not to press the matter any further, for which Blaise was grateful. His feelings towards Harry were confusing enough as they were.

Like many pure-bloods, Daphne and Theo—also one of his best friends—had married young and they had a one-year old son called Cassander. Blaise hesitated, not wanting to intrude on what must be one of Daphne and Theo's only kid-free evenings, but Daphne, obviously guessing what he was thinking, added, "Tracey'll be there, too. She might even bring her latest conquest."

He smiled. "Okay, then."

**::**

Blaise took a deep breath before finally crossing the remaining distance to Harry's cubicle at the Auror Headquarters at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He hated this. He hated having to work with Harry and most of all he hated not hating Harry and the feeling of nervous, almost giddy, anticipation at seeing Harry again, despite everything that had happened. He was _over_ him, dammit. He was going to walk in there, pretend nothing had happened and just _do his job_. Yes.

But then Harry looked up, his eyes shooting up until they fixed on Blaise's. "Blaise."

He made a valiant attempt at being stoic and professional. "My spell's just reached the next testing phase. We're supposed to work together," he said, resolutely keeping his eyes at a point somewhat to Harry's right. "Believe me, if I had anything to say about it -"

"Yeah, Robards told me," Harry said, still staring at him.

They looked at each other. Blaise started to feel a bit uncomfortable under Harry's intense gaze, but then, he wasn't exactly succeeding in keeping his eyes off Harry, either.

Eventually it was Harry who broke the silence. "I uh... was just about to get something to eat. Maybe we can talk about this over lunch?"

What Blaise _should_ have done, of course, was say no, set a date and get the hell out of there. What he actually _did_, however, was more along the lines of saying "Sure, I'll get my lunch", cursing himself all the way to his room—Spell Developers had small rooms, usually shared with one or two others, instead of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's cubicles—and then to the Ministry's cafeteria and, upon arriving there, making a stupid remark about Harry's glasses. Or rather, the lack thereof.

"I see you've got rid of the glasses," he commented.

"Yeah." Harry flashed him a grin that didn't entirely hide how uncomfortable he, too, was feeling. "Trying to get rid of my Chosen One image. I thought about having the scar removed, but apparently the Wizarding World isn't all that good at plastic surgery."

At Blaise's vacant expression, Harry shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, Muggle reference."

They ate in silence for a while, every now and then glancing at the other surreptitiously.

"You look good," Harry said eventually.

"You, too," he replied after a pause. "The Muggle clothes suit you."

"Hmm. Job requirement. We can't really go around chasing—well, whatever we're chasing, in colourful, swishy robes."

Blaise laughed. "Whereas we Spell Developers can just lock ourselves up with our work all day."

"Is that why I never see you around at lunch?" Harry said, clearly aiming at—but completely missing—a joking manner.

Blaise, thinking the answer was quite self-evident, didn't answer.

Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Um. Okay. So what sort of spell is it we're going to be testing?"

"It's a transport spell. It's less uncomfortable than Apparition or Portkeying, plus you can use it to jump to people, or to places you've never been to. My boss thought the 'jumping to people' part might be useful for Aurors," Blaise explained, feeling a lot more at ease now he was talking about his work.

Harry considered this. "Hmm. How does it work?"

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "The technical details or just how to use it?" Harry was notoriously useless with regard to Magical Theory. Or at least, he had been when— No, not going there.

Harry cocked his head. "Would I understand the technical details?" At Blaise's dubious expression, he added, "Thought not. Just how to use it, then."

"Well, that's easy. I got permission to upload the spell, so we won't have to bother with the underlying rune structure. You just focus on your destination, use the incantation, draw the circle and step through it."

"I still didn't understand half of it," Harry admitted with a laugh.

"Don't they teach you Aurors _anything_?" Blaise sighed theatrically. "For someone who saved the world, you can be ridiculously clueless sometimes."

"Hey! At least I know how to use Expelliarmus!" Harry exclaimed, mock-affronted.

They both laughed and Blaise worried for a fleeting moment just how _easy _it was to fall back into their old banter...

**To be continued...**


	2. Chapter one

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Word count: **2,000 / 17,000

**Chapter summary:** Wherein Blaise isn't happy, and unexpected excursions to the North Pole are made.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

The weekend passed much too quickly for Blaise's liking. Or too slowly; he wasn't quite sure which.

On Friday night he had gone out with Daphne, Theo and Tracey and got hammered. Which had turned out to be a very bad idea indeed, since he had—allegedly—ended up snogging Justin Finch-Fletchley. Blaise hoped that wasn't true.

Then on Saturday, he was once again admonished by his mother for not continuing the family tradition of marrying people and then killing them off, which wasn't really Blaise's definition of a nice day either. Well, it could have been worse, he supposed. He could have had a hangover. Bless the person who had invented the hangover potion.

And on Sunday, Blaise got very annoyed when it took him no less than six hours to find the bug in a ridiculously simple rune structure he had said he'd check over for a friend.

The weekend was saved somewhat by the discovery that Daphne _had_ been pulling his leg and that he in fact hadn't snogged Finch-Fletchley the Friday before. Blaise chose to ignore the fact that he apparently _had_ made a complete fool of himself on the dance floor, though.

On Monday morning, looking at the big golden letters saying 'Auror Department' on the door in front of him, he caught himself being maybe—no, actually he was quite sure of it—being a bit too happy at the prospect of seeing Harry again. _He __dumped_ _you_, he forcefully reminded himself.

Like Harry, he was dressed in Muggle clothes for the occasion, which was much more practical when practising spells than wizarding robes. Blaise prided himself on knowing more or less what was normal Muggle clothing. You'd never see _him_ walking around in pyjamas with a raincoat, like he'd seen some idiots do at events like the Quidditch World Cup! He was wearing black, comfortable jeans and a simple t-shirt that he knew fit just right.

He looked at his watch. 10.35. Well, at least _that_ hadn't changed, he reflected.

"Sorry, meeting took a bit longer than expected," Harry apologised when he finally arrived at 10.50, by which time Blaise had started to get more than a little annoyed.

Harry opened the door and led him through a couple of hallways, past a fairly big hall where some Aurors were practising their duelling skills, to a smaller, but still quite spacey, empty hall. Blaise wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not.

"I uh... reserved this hall for the day. Do you think it's big enough?"

Blaise shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. The spell should work just as well for jumps of two feet as for jumps of two hundred thousand miles."

"Impressive." Harry whistled. "So in theory it could transport me to the Moon?"

"If you'd like to suffocate, then yes," he said dryly.

Harry let out a laugh. "Show me?"

He nodded and took a deep breath. He hadn't actually practised his spell all that much since it'd been uploaded and—while uploading greatly reduced the risk of making mistakes and saved a lot of time—he felt more at ease with the rune structure itself. He concentrated on his destination, namely the other end of the room, used the incantation and finally drew the circle.

From the corner of his eye he saw the exit appearing, one of the advantages of doing this over a short distance. He stepped through the brightly glowing blue-and-red circle and stepped out of the identical one on the other end of the room.

"See? Easy. Just focus on your intended destination, use the incantation—_Efringo_!—draw the circle and step through it."

Well, apparently it wasn't _that_ easy, because one hour later, Harry still hadn't managed to get more than a weakly flickering circle that almost instantly disappeared again.

Harry was getting increasingly frustrated, which didn't really help matters, and Blaise started pondering banging his head against the nearest wall. Come on! It wasn't _that_ difficult! "No! Clockwise!" he exclaimed for what felt like the thousandth time. "The circle has to be positively oriented!"

"That makes no _sense_! Whoever makes a spell that goes clockwise?" Harry exploded for what also seemed at least the thousandth time that morning.

"It's the _counter-_clockwise thing that doesn't make sense! Mathematically the other way 'round is much more logical!" Blaise shot back.

They glared at each other until Harry finally looked away, sighed and said, much more calmly and a bit defeatedly, "Let's take a break."

**::**

Fifteen minutes later, slouched on a bench in the September sun, Harry said, "Am I really that hopeless or is your spell just that difficult?"

Blaise let out a short laugh, his annoyance melting away in the sun. "You should be glad you don't have to write out the entire rune structure every time. Now _that's _difficult."

Harry groaned and leaned his head back against the bench. "And I suppose you can actually _do_ that?"

"Practice makes perfect," Blaise replied modestly. He glanced at his watch. "Ready for another go?"

"Not really..." Harry sighed, but rose anyway. "Let's go."

**::**

"Remember: the secret is to draw the circle clockwise," Blaise said as they reached the training hall again.

"I know. It just feels so... unnatural," Harry said, eyeing the hall with slight apprehension. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and eventually asked, "Would you... show me the runes?"

Blaise raised an eyebrow in a 'I know you're just trying to put things off, you know' kind of way, but only said, "Sure. It'll take me a while, though."

Harry's eyes lit up, but whether that was at the prospect of seeing exciting rune magic or simply because this way he could defer practising for a few more minutes was unclear. Blaise suspected it was the latter. But honestly, when had he ever been able to refuse Harry anything? So he began to draw the runes in the air, starting with the root.

As he carefully worked his way through the structure, the air in front of him filled with more and more glowing runes, some of them red, but most of them bright blue. Harry, meanwhile, thankfully didn't say a word, but stared at the runes with what seemed like a mixture of admiration and fear. It still amused Blaise a lot that so many powerful wizards seemed scared of rune magic, which was actually the basis of all existing spells.

Eventually he stepped back, looking critically at his rune structure. He saw no glaring errors, but with spells like this one you had to be exceedingly careful, or you might Splinch yourself beyond recognition or suffer some other, equally horrible fate. When he was satisfied that the structure was correct, he turned to Harry and said, "This is the actual rune structure you invoke by using the incantation and wand movement."

Harry looked at the—admittedly quite huge—structure in awe. He walked around it several times to look at it from all angles. "I am so glad I'm an Auror," he breathed.

Blaise smirked, feeling inordinately pleased with himself and immediately scolding himself for that. What was he _doing_? Trying to impress Harry?

Harry, meanwhile, proved several seconds later that he was more attentive than people often gave him credit for. "How come it doesn't look like the spell? It's not exactly a gateway, is it?" he commented.

"I still have to add the target location. It'll look different after that," Blaise replied and proceeded to add the final runes. As soon as he had finished, the structure started to swirl and dissolved into a bright circle, an identical one appearing at the other side of the room.

"Is that what you do all the time? Draw runes?" Harry asked, seeming genuinely curious. He added a "Wow, that was bizarre," referring to, Blaise assumed, seeing parts of him in different parts of the room as he stepped through the first circle and appeared through the second one.

"Pretty much," he replied. "We spend most of our time writing and calculating rune structures. It's wonderfully complicated." Blaise loved his job. Even the debugging of rune structures—spending hours and hours finding the mistake in a structure that he thought should work perfectly but didn't—wasn't something he hated, unlike most of his colleagues. Well, as long as he didn't have to do it too often.

And he guessed his love for rune magic was part of the reason— No, not thinking about that.

"Your turn again."

Harry grimaced, but didn't object. He took his place in the middle of the hall, closed his eyes and took a deep breath before beginning to mutter the incantation. But before he could complete his circle, Blaise caught his wrist.

"The secret is to go clockwise, remember?"

"Dammit," Harry swore. After a pause: "Are you sure you didn't just make it clockwise because you're left-handed?"

"A positively oriented curve makes a spell more powerful," Blaise quoted one of his old study books.

It was at this point that Blaise realised three things. One: he still had his hand on Harry's wrist. Two: a pair of green eyes were boring into his from a distance that was rather too close for comfort. And three: this was a really bad idea.

He abruptly let go of Harry's hand, and the spell was broken. They both took an embarrassed step back and Harry tried again. However, he was apparently so distracted that he promptly waved his wand in the wrong direction again.

"Argh! I've had it up to here with your stupid spell!" he exclaimed frustratedly. "_Efringo_!" he yelled, and viciously slashed his wand through the air in—surprisingly—roughly the right direction.

A brightly glowing circle appeared in front of him.

Harry stared at it in shock for quite some time, then a grin broke out on his face. "I did it!" He laughed incredulously. "I did it!"

"Well, step through it, then!" Blaise said, amused.

Two seconds later, when he watched Harry's right foot disappear through the circle, he wished he hadn't said that. Or at least, that he had paid more attention. Because he _should_ have noticed that there was no second circle. Not anywhere he could see it, at least. And of course the first circle had already closed behind Harry.

He swore. Who knew where Harry could have ended up if he hadn't been focussing properly? Efringo's built-in safety precautions should have prevented him from ending up in the middle of an erupting volcano or something like that, but Blaise wouldn't like to bet his money on that.

He muttered some more curses, then took a deep breath and began the incantation. _Harry. Bring me to Harry_, he thought feverishly. He waved his wand and the circle appeared. Hoping very much that he wouldn't end up somewhere, say, two miles under sea level or—Merlin forbid—on the _Moon_, he stepped through it.

His first reaction was one of relief. He could breathe! His second reaction was something along the lines of 'Where the hell am I?' when he took in his completely white surroundings and the ice-cold wind howling around him. It looked suspiciously like he'd ended up on the North Pole. It was bloody _freezing_.

"What the hell were you thinking about?" he yelled when he spotted Harry some fifteen yards away, regarding his surroundings with astonishment.

Harry turned around. "I have no idea! Definitely not this!" he yelled back, making his way over to Blaise.

Blaise rolled his eyes. "Come on," he said, offering Harry his hand, "Let's get out of here."

He resolutely ignored the jolt of electricity that went through him as they touched.

**To be continued...**


	3. Chapter two

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Word count: **2,750 / 17,000

**Chapter summary:** Wherein Harry and Blaise break the Statute of Secrecy and there is a lot of yelling.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

The next day, they were to test the spell in a real situation.

"Viola MacDonald disappeared a few weeks ago. We didn't find anything at all, so the case was closed," Harry explained. "It might be related to a series of other disappearances over the past few months. Most of them turned up again, but no one could remember what had happened to them."

"Wizarding disappearances?"

"Yeah. Not a single Muggle, as far as we know. The strangest thing is, that some of them seemed to have lost part of their magic."

"Huh. Weird."

Harry hummed his agreement. "We thought maybe a bunch of fugitive Death Eaters were behind it, or maybe some magic-hating Muggles, but we found nothing. Not even the faintest clue."

"So what's the plan?" Blaise inquired.

"Depends a bit on how much information you need for your spell. Is just a name enough, or do you need more, a photograph or something?"

"Preferably a photo. You never know how many people share the same name," Blaise said after a moment's thought.

A photograph was easily procured, as the Auror Office had a folder containing pictures of all missing people.

"Blaise?" Harry asked when Blaise was looking at the photo.

"Hmm?" He tried not to feel too happy at Harry saying his name and instead focussed his attention on the picture he was looking at, one of a smiling woman with what he presumed were her children, a bloke of about 20 years old and a younger girl. Her eyes seemed sad, though.

"Can your spell be used to jump to dead people? I don't really fancy ending up in the afterlife prematurely."

"Should be fine," Blaise replied with a shrug. "At least, it was when I tested it."

"How about cremated people whose ashes were scattered across the ocean?" Harry tried again.

"Then the destination isn't well-defined and the spell shouldn't work," Blaise explained. "So, time to go?" He handed Harry the photograph.

Harry gave him a dubious look. "Do you really trust me to not make us end up on the bottom of the Mariana Trench?"

He shrugged. "I can do it, but..."

"Never mind." Harry twirled his wand a bit, seemingly still hesitating to use the spell. "You know, this spell could be pretty dangerous in the wrong hands..."

Blaise's expression darkened. "It could be, yeah... That's why I think the Ministry won't approve it for general usage and keep it for themselves. Or maybe put a lot of restrictions on its use, like with Portkeys."

"Hmm." Harry considered this. "Doesn't that give the Ministry way too much power? Having spells no one knows about?"

"A smart wizard will always find a way out. And I've been working on a ward against it, so it's not like the Ministry can just jump into your house. And I suspect people will find ways to make themselves untrackable," Blaise said with a shrug.

"People who know how to make spells, yeah..." Harry muttered. "But... if they don't approve it, what are they going to do about you? You could go around and tell everyone about it anyway, if you wanted, right?"

Blaise blinked. This conversation was starting to get a bit disconcerting. "I guess they could put a restriction on it, like with underage magic, so they'll know when you use it. Although that wouldn't work for the rune structure." He shook his head, trying to get rid of the disturbing thoughts this conversation was giving him, like the Ministry Obliviating him so he wouldn't remember his own spell. "Anyway. Let's go, yeah?"

Harry sighed and drew up the circle.

**::**

"Ow!" Harry yelped, hitting his head against the low ceiling of what seemed like a dead-ended old mine the spell had taken them to.

"_Lumos_," Blaise whispered, and immediately wished he hadn't. "Oh, _Merlin_."

The woman they had been looking for was shackled to the rock wall in front of them and—from the looks of it—was either unconscious or dead. Elsewhere in the tunnel lay some haphazardly scattered bones, though Blaise couldn't say whether the remains were human or not.

Harry rushed forward, his own glowing wand in hand. He felt for a pulse. "She's still alive," he said quietly, looking up at Blaise.

Which was brilliant news of course, but right now, Blaise had more pressing matters at hand. Like the three Muggles—two men and a woman—standing behind Harry's back, pointing things at them that Blaise strongly suspected were weapons. But then, he had always been a bit hazy about Muggle stuff.

"Um. Harry?"

"Wh-?" Harry began to ask, but halfway his question he had turned around and changed into a surprised, "Oh," followed by a, "Didn't your spell have some built-in precaution against appearing in front of Muggles?"

"It should have, yeah. I guess the rock must've been interfering," he replied with a shrug, eyes fixed on the Muggle weapon-thingies.

"Huh. Well, hopefully we won't get court-marshalled for breaking the Statute of Secrecy, then," Harry commented.

"Who are you?" the tall man in the middle, wearing a long coat that seemed rather out of place, demanded. He seemed a bit annoyed at their lack of interest.

The woman on his left said, "They must have come through the Rift. Look at their clothes!"

"Is something _wrong _with them?" Blaise said, his voice dangerously low. The air around him crackled and somewhere something started beeping.

The woman, despite being the one with a weapon trained on him, gulped, which gave him a momentary sense of satisfaction.

"No sign of Rift activity. I'm picking up some weird energy readings, though," said the third Muggle, who in his immaculate suit seemed just as out of place as the other two, looking at the small Muggle contraption that was blinking and beeping in his hand.

The man in the coat—their leader, Blaise assumed—motioned the woman to lower her weapon and cleared his throat. "Right. Who are you, and where did you come from?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "We could ask you the same. Guns aren't exactly standard equipment in here."

"_We _didn't appear out of thin air, though," the woman commented, still eyeing them suspiciously.

The three exchanged a look. Eventually their leader said, "I'm Captain Jack Harkness. Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones. We're looking into some reports about strange activity in the area."

"Like what?" Harry asked, interested.

The ghost of a smirk tugged on Harkness's mouth. "First tell me who you are, _then_ maybe I'll tell you. For all we know, you could be the ones we're looking for."

"We're looking into a disappearance," Harry said, looking at the unconscious woman.

Blaise looked from Harry to the Muggles, who didn't quite seem convinced by his explanation.

"Where did you come from?" Harkness asked, his arms crossed.

"They're not Time Agents, are they?" the woman whispered not quite softly enough. "Weird fashion sense, teleportation..."

Blaise bristled at this second insulting remark about his clothing.

The device the bloke in the suit—Ianto Jones—was holding started flashing and beeping again. "No wristband," he pointed out, which had absolutely no meaning whatsoever to Blaise, but seemed to convince Cooper.

"_Well_?" Harkness demanded rather impatiently.

Harry looked at Blaise, then shrugged and said, "If you really want to know, we're wizards."

_Has he gone insane?_ "Do you _want _us to get court-marshalled?" Blaise hissed.

"Relax. It's not like they're going to believe us," Harry said in a low voice, followed by a louder, "A number of our people have been disappearing lately, but until his—" he nodded in Blaise's general direction, "new spell, we didn't have any way to find them back. It transported us here, is all."

To their surprise, the Muggles seemed to simply take this information in their stride. Their leader even grinned triumphantly—or maybe Blaise was simply imagining things.

"You believe us?" Harry asked, surprised and with a tinge of worry.

Blaise face-palmed and started to hum the well-known Weird Sisters song '_Azkaban, here we come_' under his breath. So much for Harry's brilliant plan. Appearing right in front of Muggles might have been forgiven, considering his spell was still in the testing phase. But outright telling Muggles they were wizards?

Harkness just shrugged and said, still with that disconcerting grin, "We catch aliens. We've seen stranger things. And I had a run-in with your pal Voldy-something a while back."

"You... _what?_" Harry asked, feebly. Blaise just blinked. _Aliens?_ This man was a raving lunatic! But one with a worrying knowledge of their world.

"He wreaked quite some havoc, didn't he?" Harkness said, clearly delighting in having the upper hand now. "We thought for a while it was aliens, but—"

"Shh!" the bloke in the suit suddenly hissed. "I think I hear something."

And indeed, the faint sound of footsteps in the distance reached their ears.

They all switched off their lights.

In the darkness, he heard Harkness swear. Blaise suspected that they, like him, didn't fancy ending up like the people whose skeletons were scattered around them. As they were in a dead end of a mine, they had nowhere to go.

"What do we _do_?" Cooper hissed.

"It sounds like there's more than one of them," Jones commented in a low voice. "We can't fight them all off here. We don't even know what they are! And judging from this here, they're not friendly."

"We don't have a choice, though, do we? There's no way out," Harkness said grimly.

Blaise lit a small rune in the air between them—rune magic couldn't be detected, and what did it matter anymore anyway?—and exchanged a look with Harry, who nodded.

"Actually, there is," he said and drew up a portal. "This will take you to the entrance of the mine."

Harkness nodded and grabbed both his co-worker's hands. "Thank you."

"Quick," Harry muttered, when the three had disappeared and the portal had closed. "They're getting closer."

"Shouldn't we wait to see who they are?" Blaise whispered back. "Or at least take her with us?"

"No! There's only two of us, and Merlin knows how many of them. And you're not trained for this. I'll get back-up."

Blaise grimaced, but conceded Harry's point. He drew another circle, this time back to the Ministry.

And then everything happened really fast. In less than five minutes, Harry had told Robards what had happened—minus the mysterious Muggles—and had taken off with a group of Aurors and a Mediwitch to save Mrs. MacDonald and hopefully catch the culprits while they were still in the old mine.

Blaise felt rather lost.

**::**

Blaise wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but somehow running into Harry when he was on his way home and Harry was just arriving back at the Ministry had led to him sitting in The Leaky Cauldron, having a Butterbeer and listening to Harry's whining about his spell.

"Your spell really sucks," Harry complained halfway his second Butterbeer. "We tried to find Viola MacDonald again, but it didn't work. I couldn't even open a portal!"

"I don't see how you can be surprised about that, considering your success rate yesterday. Also, _North Pole_?" Blaise said pointedly, with more than a little bit of annoyance.

"Portals _elsewhere_ are fine."

"And why couldn't you just Apparate to that Welsh mine, anyway?"

"We did! But she wasn't there anymore."

"They must have heard us and taken her away," Blaise mused.

"Still, that's no reason why your spell didn't work. And are you even sure that spell of yours is safe? Who knows where I could've ended up!"

"Well, you don't Apparate without a clear destination in mind either, do you?" Blaise said impatiently. "And it's even _less _dangerous than Apparition, because you can't get Splinched. The spell either works or it doesn't; it won't leave half of you behind. It even has a few built-in safety precautions."

"Weeeeell," Harry said, sounding dubious.

"Okay, so the anti-appearing in front of Muggles one doesn't quite work the way it should. Tough," Blaise snapped.

Harry had the grace to look vaguely abashed. "Sorry." He then grinned mischievously and said, "At least I have you to save me."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Blaise said pointedly, with more than a little bit of warning in his voice. Ignoring their shared history had worked so far that week; he'd like to keep it that way and not unnecessarily complicate matters.

Harry, obliviously, continued. "Oh? I seem to remember—"

"Do you really want to go there?" Blaise interrupted. "We still have to work together for at least a few days, you know."

"But— I thought..." Harry began. "You don't want me anymore, then?" he said, sounding more than a little bit hurt.

He looked at Harry incredulously. Then, without saying another word, he stood up and stormed out. He really didn't want to cause a scene in the middle of a Wizarding pub.

Once outside, he stopped to take a deep, calming breath. This turned out to be a very bad mistake, as Harry apparently wasn't going to give up that easily and caught up with him before he could take more than a few steps away from The Leaky Cauldron.

"Wait!"

Blaise turned around and glared at him.

"I can't do this! I can't pretend nothing's happened! We need to talk about this."

"Why not? You were doing a great job until now," Blaise snapped back. Dammit, why did Harry have to make things so bloody difficult? "And what's there to talk _about_? _You_ chose a 'normal' life over me. You _dumped_ me!"

Some distant part of his mind tried to draw attention to the fact that he was doing exactly what he had wanted to avoid by storming out of The Leaky Cauldron, namely causing a scene, and failed. There was no turning back now. And fortunately it looked like there were no wizards around or else this would be all over _The_ _Daily Prophet_ the next morning. "And now that you've apparently changed your mind, I'm supposed to come running back to you? I don't think so. You hurt me once—I'm not going there again."

"Yeah, right," Harry said sarcastically. "You got over it quickly enough, didn't you? It's not like you ever really cared about me!"

"What? Is _that_ what your friends told you? 'I'm a Slytherin so I can't possibly have feelings'?" he quoted mockingly, conveniently skipping the first part of the accusation, which, admittedly, did have a slight grain of truth to it. Snogging Terry just to get back at Harry might not have been one of the brightest things he'd ever done.

"That's not what I meant!"

"Then what _did _you mean? I _loved_ you, for fuck's sake, and _you _ran away." Blaise jabbed a finger at Harry accusingly. "You and your constant, stupid self-pity and your 'Oh, we really shouldn't be doing this' and 'I really should stop seeing you'!"

"That's n—" Harry began, furiously, then stopped mid-word, his eyes widening almost comically. "Did I really do that?"

"_Yes_." Blaise glared at him.

Harry gaped at him. "But... Why didn't you say anything?"

Blaise scoffed. "You mean, why didn't I fall on my knees and beg you to stay?" he drawled sarcastically.

Harry looked away, huffing a short laugh. "If you state it like that, it does sound fairly ridiculous."

They looked at each other for a long time. Eventually Harry broke the silence. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"Yeah, well, maybe sorry isn't good enough," Blaise said, not looking at Harry for fear he might do something incredibly stupid, like caving in and giving Harry a second chance. "See you." He Disapparated before Harry got the chance to say something.

**To be continued...**


	4. Chapter three

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Word count: **3,750 / 17,000

**Chapter summary:** Wherein Harry almost drowns (or so he claims) and he and Blaise are chased by fluffy aliens.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

"How's working with Blaise going?" Hermione asked the next day, during their lunch break. The weather was surprisingly lovely for the time of year, so they had decided to go outside and were now sitting on a bench in the sun. The very same bench he and Blaise had sat on two days before. "Must be... _weird_, after all that's happened."

"It wasn't, really, until I..." he trailed off.

"Until you, what? Insulted his spell?" Hermione joked.

"Um. Well, there was _that_..."

"_Harry_!" Hermione exclaimed. "You _know_ Spell Developers go mental when you do that."

"I ended up at the North Pole!" Harry said mock-indignantly. "And we were threatened by Muggles with guns."

Hermione shook her head, chuckling. "You Aurors always get to do the exciting stuff."

"Yeah, well." Harry prodded his sandwich, not looking at his Hermione.

"You still care about him, don't you," she said softly.

Apart from Daphne Greengrass, Hermione was probably the one who knew most about his relationship with Blaise. But even she didn't know exactly how and why it had ended.

"I hadn't realised how much I'd missed him," he admitted. "It was just so... _easy_ to talk to him again. Like nothing had happened. Well, until I screwed up."

"I take it you didn't just insult his spell, then," Hermione said, looking at him steadily.

"I, ah, may have made a pass at him when we were having a drink at _The Leaky Cauldron_."

"So what happened?"

"He stormed out, I went after him, we yelled at each other... Well, it was mostly him yelling at me, really. And for good reason. I really bolloxed up, didn't I?"

"He probably felt like he was your dirty little secret," Hermione said.

"Yeah, well, what should I have done, then? The _Prophet_ would have had a field day if they'd found out," he said irritably, slipping back into 'defence-mode', just like during his relationship with Blaise. At Hermione's look he added, "I know! I know we couldn't have kept it a secret forever, but..."

"You weren't ready," Hermione supplied.

"I guess. Well, and by the time I realised I'd made a mistake..." he trailed off, thinking back to what he had taken to referring to as 'the Boot Incident' in his mind. "Well, then I saw him with Terry."

Hermione grimaced. "Ouch."

Harry let out a humourless laugh. "And that's when the yelling started. I mentioned the Boot Incident, he accused me of stereotyping Slytherins, I yelled back I didn't mean it that way, and then he—" He stopped abruptly.

Hermione put a comforting hand on his knee, but didn't press on, for which he was grateful.

"Anyway. The rest of this project is going to be a disaster now," he said.

**::**

This impression was reinforced later that day, when Harry went to find Blaise to tell him they had a case.

"Come in," a voice that definitely wasn't Blaise's called when Harry knocked on what he thought _should _have been the door of Blaise's room at the Ministry.

"Oh, hullo, Anthony," he said, when he'd stuck his head around the door and saw who it was. "I'm looking for Blaise?"

"I think he's doing some testing on a new rune structure of his," the Ravenclaw said with a shrug. "I warn you, though. He's in a foul mood."

"Oh?" Harry said, feigning surprise.

"I'm not sure why," Anthony replied. "I was testing my own spell all morning. When I got back, well..." He gestured at the thin layer of ashes on Blaise's desk, and Harry winced. "He was throwing pieces of crumpled parchment into the air and burning them one by one. Probably messed up a rune structure and had to start all over again or something like that."

_Uh-oh,_ Harry thought, a sense of dread forming. Would Blaise really be _that_ mad at him? That didn't exactly bode well.

"Um. Do you know where I find him? We're working together on testing his new spell," he clarified.

"Level eight. Turn left when you leave the lift."

**::**

It turned out that it wasn't hard to find the Spell Developer testing centre. Now he just had to find Blaise.

A few minutes later, he found what he was looking for. He quietly entered the hall.

Blaise was standing with his back turned towards the door and was drawing brightly glowing runes in the air, most of which were ominously red.

The floating mass of runes turned into what seemed like a ball of fire, which Blaise sent towards a man-shaped wooden board with an aggressive flick of his hand. The wood exploded with a bright flash.

He cleared his throat to alert Blaise to his presence, feeling slightly nervous. He really didn't want to have such a fireball thrown at him.

Blaise abruptly turned around and upon seeing Harry an expression Harry couldn't quite place crossed his handsome features. "Harry."

_Okay, so far no fireballs. That is good, right?_ Harry thought. "Hey," he said, feeling very self-conscious, for some reason. "I, uh..."

Blaise crossed his arms in what could only be described as a defensive manner, making no move to get any closer. "You have a suitable case?"

"Um. Yeah, but, er..." he began. He gathered his courage and blurted out, "Look, I... I'm really sorry. About yesterday and er, well, everything."

Blaise turned his back on him again and started to draw a few runes, this time thankfully blue and thus not nearly as threateningas the aggressively red ones had been. "Your friend paid me a visit this morning," he said.

Harry blinked. "Hermione?" he asked, surprised.

Blaise snorted. "The other one. Weasley."

Ah. Harry had a feeling which way this was going. And why Blaise was in such an incredibly foul mood.

"He seemed to be under the impression that _I _had somehow broken _your _heart and was plotting to do it again." _Bingo_.

Harry gulped nervously. "He, er... might have drawn his own conclusions," he said.

He jumped back when a glowing circle suddenly appeared in front of him and an angry-looking Blaise stepped through it, ending up right in front of him. "And you didn't deem it necessary to correct him," Blaise said, his voice dangerously low.

"Did _you_ tell _your _friends what happened, then?" Harry asked, slightly defiantly.

Blaise's eyes flashed. "I never lied to them."

"Well, maybe my friends aren't as accepting as yours are!" Harry suddenly exploded. Why couldn't Blaise see how difficult this was for him? "You have no idea what it's like to grow up without friends, to always be the freak nephew, or the bloody Boy Who Lived!"

"_You _need to stop finding excuses," Blaise snapped. "If you can't handle being in a relationship with a bloke, fine! But I refuse to be dragged along in your stupid self-pity."

Harry raked a hand through his hair in frustration. This wasn't going the way it was supposed to! He hadn't come here to argue yet again. "Okay, you're right. I'm sorry," he began, forcing himself to sound calm. "I shouldn't have let other people's opinion influence me so much. Or, well, what I _thought_ was their opinion, really," he amended. Hermione had always got along well with Blaise, and Ginny, after she had got over the initial shock, had also been supportive. And Ron, well, Ron had also accepted his relationship with Blaise, albeit grudgingly at first.

Blaise just waited, his expression unreadable.

Harry struggled on. "I made a mistake," he said, looking at Blaise and waiting until Blaise looked back. He hoped Blaise could see he was telling the truth. "I wouldn't... I _won't_ run away again."

"And what if other people find out?" Blaise asked, his eyes not leaving Harry's, but subconsciously creating distance between them by taking a small step back and crossing his arms again.

"Maybe I don't care what they think," Harry replied, not breaking eye-contact.

Blaise took one step towards him, then abruptly stopped. Looking away, he said, "So, this case you were talking about...?"

"Er, yeah. Death Eater escape. Using your spell we should've him recaptured in no time at all," Harry explained.

"Someone we know?" Blaise inquired, his expression inscrutable.

"Amycus Carrow."

Blaise's eyebrows shot up. "Really. I would've thought he's too stupid to escape."

Harry shrugged. "No idea how he managed it."

**::**

As it turned out, _Amycus_ Carrow was indeed too stupid too escape, Harry and Blaise realised when they appeared in the midst of the courtyard of the slightly more humane prison that had replaced Azkaban after the war.

"Potter!" about a dozen prisoners growled at the same time.

"Erm..." said Harry intelligently. "Oops?"

Blaise face-palmed and drew up a new portal, this time to _Alecto_ Carrow, just in time before they were lynched by a mob of bloodthirsty Death Eaters.

**::**

"Well, your spell quite obviously _sucks_. Look where it got us!" Harry exclaimed angrily, gesturing wildly at the endless amounts of water surrounding them and the little boat that was slowly becoming nothing more than a small dot in the far distance.

"My spell worked perfectly," Blaise retorted. "It's not _my_ fault _Alecto _Carrow escaped by boat."

Harry spluttered, a combination of indignation and the fact that he could hardly keep his head above the water—why was there never any Gillyweed when you needed it?—and thus frequently got water in his mouth. "...so what do we do now?"

"I'm not sure the spell works under water—"

"_Fuck_. What exactly _are_ you capable of?" Harry muttered moodily.

Blaise glared at him. "Whining doesn't make things better, you know. Anyway, as I was trying to say, I think we should just Apparate home and—"

"_Apparate_? How am I supposed to focus on that Determination, Desperation, Whatever bollockswhen I'm _almost drowning_?"

"Well, unless you'd like to _swim_ home, I'd suggest you get on with it anyway," Blaise said irritably.

Silence.

Blaise sighed. "Have you ever Apparated someone with you?" When Harry confirmed this, he continued: "How about I keep your head above the surface, and you Apparate the two of us back?" He didn't await Harry's answer, but closed the distance between them, his lean body gracefully cleaving the waves, and grasped his waist.

He stopped treading water, and noticed that Blaise was indeed very capable of keeping them both afloat. He tried to focus on his destination, but found that the body pressed against his was distracting him way too much.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" it sounded impatiently from behind him.

Harry had to forcibly resist asking whether that was a wand in his pocket, or...? Blaise would _not_ be amused. At all. "Er... just thinking."

"Just focus, already! We could've been back for _hours_! How an idiot like you could've ever defeated the Dark Lord is beyond me."

"Blaise?"

Sigh. "Yes?"

"How am I supposed to 'step forward, feeling my way into nothingness', when I'm in the water?"

"Argh!"

After that outburst, it became suspiciously quiet behind him. "Blaise? Are you all right?" he asked tentatively.

He felt Blaise kick the water with unnecessary violence. "Sure. Brilliant. Just pondering how much I would love to have a wall nearby to bang my head against."

"Oh."

"Remind me to bring a Portkey next time."

Portkey... he was sure he had heard that word recently... but where?

Portkey!

Suddenly he was very glad Blaise could only see the back of his head. "Um... Blaise?"

"_Now_ what?"

"I think I may have a Portkey with me." All Aurors had to carry one with them at all times, in case they had to get out of somewhere and were—for example—too badly injured to Apparate. But really, Harry couldn't be blamed for forgetting that; he had only been an Auror for less than a year! Okay, so he had very recently got a new Portkey for some obscure reason, but still.

Blaise suddenly let go of him, causing his head to disappear beneath the waves before he started to tread water and got his head above the surface again, looking straight into a pair of angry, dark eyes.

He gulped, promptly swallowing a mouthful of the salty water.

"And you just... _forgot_," Blaise said, his voice dangerously low.

"Well..." Harry said between two coughs.

"What are you waiting for? _Get that thing_!"

**::**

"Ow!" Blaise let out a yelp of pain when they crash landed onto some unknown location and the back of his head connected painfully hard with the ground.

Harry, meanwhile, had a much softer landing, namely on Blaise. He looked around to see where they had ended up, then froze, blinked, shook his head, blinked again and completely forgot that he hadn't yet moved, until Blaise reminded him of that fact.

"You're still sitting on me," Blaise commented, rubbing his head.

The comment still didn't really register, as he noticed more and more astounding properties of their surroundings. "The sky is orange," he said.

Blaise did the same looking-blinking-headshaking thing Harry had done a minute earlier, only mixed with an expression that Harry was pretty sure meant something along the lines of 'What the hell? Has he gone insane?'

"Right. And the grass is pur—" Blaise began sarcastically. Halfway the word 'purple', however, he made the mistake of actually looking around, and his eyes went wide as saucers. "Merlin. The grass _is_ purple," he whispered in shock.

"Where do you think we are?" Harry asked, still not bothering to get up.

Blaise pushed Harry off of him unceremoniously. "It was _your_ Portkey," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"It was supposed to take us someplace in Scotland, I think."

"Well, unless _Scotland_'s had a very radical makeover, this doesn't really look like it," Blaise snapped.

"They don't have koalas there either, do they?" Harry said thoughtfully.

"...koalas?" Blaise asked wearily, quite possibly—Harry had a feeling—wondering if _he_ had gone insane now. His eyes followed the direction Harry indicated. He looked, blinked, and looked again, squinting a bit. "They look more like Ewoks to me, actually," Blaise said, sounding remarkably calm for someone who had just found himself in a place where the sky was orange and the grass purple and who was looking at creatures that looked like they had just hopped out of a Muggle science fiction movie.

"Ewoks? You know _Star Wars_?" Harry exclaimed, for a moment distracted from the fluffy animals. The Ewoks—or whatever they were—seemed to be rushing towards them for some reason.

Blaise looked a bit closer. "In fact, I'd even go as far as to say they look like Ewoks with weapons."

That exact moment, an arrow landed in the tree they had previously been standing under.

They looked at each other. "_Run_!"

"But seriously, you've seen _Star Wars_?" he yelled when they were running away from the fluffy-yet-menacing horde.

"My mother's fifth husband was a fan. Used to watch it all the time. Bloody annoying," Blaise yelled back. "Didn't really mind seeing him gone."

More arrows and a few spears flew past them and to his horror, Harry saw more 'Ewoks' appearing from the bushes they were running to.

"_Do something!_" he bellowed.

Blaise hesitated, then, after a final glance at the 'Ewoks' now advancing on them from all directions, weapons raised and setting up a war cry, yelled, "_Efringo_!" and traced a circle in the air mid-run.

In the split second after Blaise had traced the circle and grabbed his hand, Harry wondered if the spell was indeed capable of—supposedly—interstellar distances and what would happen if it wasn't. But the sight of the Ewoks—Harry decided he was going to keep calling the creatures that—convinced him that whatever would happen, it couldn't possibly be worse—and would definitely be less embarrassing—than getting lynched by fuzzy aliens.

They jumped.

**::**

"This wasn't exactly where I was aiming at," Blaise said dubiously.

Harry hadn't landed on Blaise this time, but had still had a surprisingly soft landing. "Nice soft landing, though," he commented. He looked around and was surprised to recognise his surroundings as Blaise's bedroom, albeit slightly different from how he remembered it. "Have you redecorated?"

Blaise opened his mouth to say something, but didn't get any further than that, as an Ewok chose that exact moment to jump up from where he had apparently landed on the floor near Blaise's bed, shouting a war cry that sounded somewhat like "Squee!", his bow at the ready and an arrow pointing straight at Harry.

"_Stupefy_!" they yelled in unison.

The Ewok was hit squarely in the chest and continued his upward trajectory for a while longer, the arrow harmlessly falling to the floor, before falling down in one fluent, strangely graceful, motion.

Blaise looked carefully over the edge of the bed, to see if there were more surprise Ewoks skulking around.

Harry, meanwhile, had taken one of his shoes off and was now dangling it from its laces. Upon seeing Blaise's expression, he said, "Just testing if there are any more of them under your bed. Worked great for _The Great Monster Book of Monsters_."

Blaise stepped off the bed, slightly wary, and studied the paralysed Ewok.

Harry followed his example and stood next to him. "Huh. He must've slipped through before the portal closed," he observed, prodding it with his toe. "What do we do with it?"

Blaise shrugged. "I guess we could send it back to its own world."

"Yeah," he agreed. After a thoughtful pause he added, "I should probably tell my boss what happened with the Portkey, though. We can't have Aurors getting stuck on alien planets. And he'd never believe us if we don't have evidence."

Blaise turned around, facing him, and for a moment Harry was sure Blaise was going to kiss him—which was of course ridiculous. But then the Spell Developer stepped back and said dully, "Yeah, let's take it to the Ministry."

**::**

By the time they had spoken with Robards ("You two really do get into a lot of unusual situations, don't you?"), it was almost half past four.

"What time is it?" Blaise asked?

"Half four. Not really enough time left to get anything useful done," Harry commented.

Blaise hummed his agreement.

"Duel?" Harry suggested with a mischievous grin. He wasn't quite sure what made him suggest that; he only knew that he didn't want to say good-bye yet. They hadn't ended up in Blaise's bedroom for nothing, he was sure of that. Efringo was all about focus, as Blaise kept reminding him.

"_Duel_. A fully-trained Auror against a Spell Developer. Not really fair, is it?" Blaise said dubiously.

"My practical experience against your rune magic and experimental spells," Harry corrected. "Not _that_ unfair."

Blaise's competitive streak must have surfaced—just as Harry had anticipated—because he smirked and said, "You're _on_."

A few minutes later, in one of the Auror training halls, they inclined their heads and moved to standard duelling position.

"Three. Two. One!" Harry counted, immediately followed by his first spell. "_Expelliarmus_!"

Blaise, however, had seen that spell coming and had his defence ready. "_Protego_."

The red jet of Expelliarmus deflected.

They circled around each other, until suddenly Blaise moved his wand and cast a non-verbal spell. Harry's Auror reflexes made him step aside just in time and the jet of light flew past him.

The circling continued. Harry grinned, while Blaise was eyeing him with a predatory gleam in his eyes that said he wasn't going to give up anytime soon. Or ever, really. Blaise hated losing.

Blaise starting to draw a blue-glowing rune in the air and then four more around it.

Harry realised that this would be his chance, now that Blaise was distracted. "_Rictusempra_!"

Before the Tickling Charm made Blaise collapse in a laughing heap, however, he managed to cast a spell of his own. Harry ducked, but saw to his surprised that the five runes seemed to split the spell into as many different directions. His legs began to perform some sort of quickstep out of their own volition.

Blaise managed to stop laughing, although an occasional very un-Blaise-like giggle still escaped him every now and then. "_Finite_," he hiccoughed, and Harry's legs stopped doing their strange dance.

Harry decided to go for a Jelly-Leg Jinx next. Opposite him, Blaise's lips twisted in a smirk that made Harry feel distinctly uncomfortable. He was definitely up to something.

At the exact moment Harry cast his spell, a blue circle appeared between them. Before Harry had a chance to wonder what this was about, he was hit in the back with his own jinx and his legs started to wobble uncontrollably.

"Oi! That's cheating!" he exclaimed, and lunged at a laughing Blaise. Well, insofar as he was able to lunge at anything or anyone with his legs feeling like jelly. Strangely, it seemed to work in his advantage, as his wobbly legs made his trajectory very unpredictable.

"Hey! No physical -" Blaise began, when he realised what Harry was doing, but before he could finish his sentence, Harry had tackled him and they were rolling on the floor. "Now _that's_ cheating," he wheezed, the air slammed out of his lungs.

"Got you!" Harry grinned. His triumphant expression was quickly replaced by one of surprise, when Blaise hooked a leg around his and rolled them over.

"No, got _you_," Blaise said with a smirk that was entirely too self-satisfied, in Harry's opinion.

He tried to reverse positions again, but Blaise had him pinned to the ground quite effectively. And it didn't really help that his legs still felt like they were made of jelly. "Okay, I yield," he said, after some more useless trashing about. Well, useless in the sense that it didn't accomplish anything except making his trousers feel uncomfortably tight. Fortunately, it seemed he wasn't the only one with that problem.

Blaise's eyes, so close to him, were even darker than usual as he gazed down at Harry. They were so close that Harry could feel Blaise's breath on his skin. Just a little bit closer and -

A door slamming shut somewhere in the vicinity rudely brought them back to the here and now. Blaise hastily scrambled to his feet, avoiding looking at Harry, who had a bit more trouble getting to his feet, as the Jelly-Leg Jinx's effects hadn't completely worn off yet.

"I... have to go," Blaise muttered, still not looking at him.

"Yeah, me too," Harry said, still feeling a bit shaky.

**To be continued...**


	5. Chapter four

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Word count: **2,000 / 17,000

**Chapter summary:** Wherein everybody _thinks_ Harry and Blaise are sleeping together, but they're actually not.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

The next morning Blaise was working on a new rune structure, when Daphne stormed into his room.

"Hullo, Daphne," he said, distractedly.

But instead of a 'hello', she ranted, "What were you _thinking_?"

Blaise blinked. "Um. _What_?"

She blinked. "You mean you—"

"I...?" he prompted, getting more confused by the second.

She wordlessly pushed what seemed like a newspaper under his nose. He looked at her, nonplussed. Daphne merely tilted her head, indicating what Blaise had meanwhile identified as _The Daily Prophet_. Blaise was always so ridiculously early at work that he never got the _Prophet _in time, so he had cancelled his subscription.

His eyes fell on the header.

"Oh _Merlin_," he whispered. _The Boy Who Snogs Other Blokes?,_ the header read, highly originally.

Blaise's suspicions were confirmed when he unfolded the newspaper and saw a picture of himself and Harry, obviously taken the day before, though when exactly and especially _how_, he had no idea.

_Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, and Blaise Zabini, Ministry of Magic Spell Developer, caught in an intimate moment at the Ministry_, the caption read. The article by Rita Skeeter—who else?—went on to spout half-truth after outright lie, also quoting several witches and wizards either telling how they'd of course always suspected or what a pity it was that Harry played for the home team.

"The lying—" he began, seething. But then he took a better look at the picture and broke off. "What the _hell_? This never happened! I'm going to _kill_ Padma for developing that Pensi—"

"What happened to 'just work'?" Daphne asked, interrupting him mid-tirade, knowing fully well that even a PensiPicture had some basis in reality.

"I don't know!" he groaned. "Things were going just fine, and then..." He shrugged helplessly.

Daphne sighed. "Don't get me wrong. I _like _Harry. I just... I don't want to see you getting hurt again. You're my best friend."

He wanted to answer her, but a flock of owls chose that exact moment to fly into his room.

"What the—" he began, but then the owls swooped down on him _en masse_, all trying to get him to untie their letter first.

"This one's from your mother," Daphne said, helping him untie a few of the letters before the owls could get too aggressive.

The dull thuds of Blaise's head banging against his desk were drowned out by the sound of two Howlers simultaneously starting to scream at him and his 'perverse ways'.

**::**

"You did this on purpose, didn't you," Blaise said flatly, after stepping through one of his blue circles and materialising right in front of Harry's desk.

"Are you _insane_?" Harry exclaimed from where he was being picked at by two owls simultaneously trying to get him to untie their letters. "Why would I want to do _this_ to myself?" he said, gesturing wildly at the mass of letters scattered throughout his cubicle, some of them opening themselves when he wasn't quick enough to and starting to scream at him.

"Well, _I_ don't know! Maybe you thought 'Oh, if everyone _thinks_ we're shagging anyway, maybe he'll just give in'!" A distant part of his mind tried to notify him that he was starting to sound a little hysterical. And that this scenario was highly unlikely, considering what had happened between them in the past.

"Blaise, that's _paranoid_," Harry said with an exasperated eye-roll. "Now calm down. This isn't helping. And," he added, gesturing around him, "do you really want the entire Auror Department to hear this?"

He took a deep breath. Harry sort of had a point. That didn't stop him from still sounding vaguely accusing when he said, "You're being very calm about all this."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Boy Who Lived, remember?" he said sardonically. "This isn't the first time something like this has happened to me." After a thoughtful pause he added, "Might be the first time there's a grain of truth to it, though."

"So what do we do?" Blaise asked, ducking when a third owl soared past him towards Harry's desk.

"Huh. Fan mail," Harry said, when he had opened the letter. "This witch thinks we're— direct quote—'really cute together'."

"Merlin! Has the world gone insane?" Blaise cried out, for the second time that day feeling an almost irrepressible urge to bang his head against something solid.

"You mean you never noticed?" Harry quipped. Glancing at the article, he added a frustrated, "Where the hell did they get that picture? I'm pretty sure I would've noticed flashlights."

Blaise took the _Prophet_, squinted at the photo, then wordlessly handed it over to Harry, pointing at some nearly unreadable text below the picture.

Harry squinted at the paper as well. "'This photograph was taken with'..." he read out, then had to squint some more for the last, unfamiliar word. "PensiPic?" he said, looking at Blaise in question.

"They recently developed a method of taking pictures of memories over at my Department, PensiPic," Blaise explained. "Something to do with a Pensieve, hence the name. They're forced to notify readers that it's a PensiPicture, because, well, memory isn't always accurate."

Harry, looking at the picture with renewed interest, hmm-ed thoughtfully. "That explains a lot. You'd think I'd remember taking my shirt off. Well, and snogging you, obviously. I definitely wouldn't have forgotten _that_. And _what_ is that on my back?"

Blaise leaned closer to take another look, his arm brushing against Harry's in the process. "I think it's a tattoo," he commented.

"A _snitch-shaped_ tattoo?" Harry exclaimed. "What sort of person do they think I am?"

They both burst out laughing. This was just too surreal.

A steely voice interrupted them. "I'm glad you seem to think this is funny. Because _I_ don't."

They looked up from the _Prophet_ to see Gawain Robards, head of the Auror Office, looking at them disapprovingly. Harry pushed his chair back a bit, Blaise presumed to create some more distance between them. He had been standing rather close to Harry, he realised.

"I'm sorry, sir. But the article is a complete lie. And the picture is—what did you say it's called?" Harry said, turning to Blaise.

"A PensiPicture," he supplied.

"Exactly! It's not what happened! We were just -"

"_I don't care_," Robards cut in. "PensiPic or not, everyone is going to believe it's true. You get paid to do your job, not to fool around! This reflects badly on us, Potter."

"Are you going to _fire_ me?" Harry asked, disbelievingly. He added a belated, "Sir?"

The Head of the Auror Department looked from one to the other. "No," he said eventually, and threw a stack of papers onto Harry's desk. "You can go tell Kenneth MacDonald we've found his mother. Well, minus most of her memories and her magic, anyway. You can take your _boyfriend_ with you."

Blaise opened his mouth to protest that he wasn't Harry's boyfriend, but Robards silenced him with a warning look. "_Your_ boss isn't happy either, Zabini." Robards turned around to leave, but after two steps he looked back over his shoulder and added, "By the way, you're both expected at a meeting this afternoon. Three PM, my office."

"Yes, sir."

As soon as Harry was sure Robards was out of hearing range, he raged, "This is completely unfair! Can't we sue the lying bastards with their Pensi-whatever?"

Blaise shook his head. "There's nothing we can do. As long as they state it's a PensiPicture and thus doesn't necessarily reflect the truth, it's perfectly legal. Theo had a case like this a while back. Lost."

Harry rested his head on his arms and groaned. "Great."

"And even if we could, it'd only make matters worse," Blaise added gloomily.

Harry looked up. "How so?"

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "They'd ask us for _our_ memories."

"Ah." Harry grimaced. "I don't suppose simply proving that I don't have a tattoo on my back is enough?" he asked, hopefully.

Blaise shrugged without much enthusiasm. "I could ask Theo or Daphne; they studied Wizarding Law. But I doubt it. They'll probably say that even though that part of the picture isn't true, the rest might well be and still ask for our memories."

Harry sighed. "Well, that leaves us with three options, then, I suppose. One: we could state it's all one big lie and point out that it's a Pensi-thingy."

"Won't work. No one will believe us," Blaise said gloomily.

Harry ignored him. "Or, option two: we could tell them we're madly in love and plan to adopt a gazillion babies."

"...how would that be better than the article?"

"Might stop them from nagging," Harry said with a shrug. "The rumour mill isn't nearly as much fun if everything's been confirmed."

"See? Now you're just trying to -" Blaise began hotly.

Harry coughed. "There you're going again with the paranoia."

Blaise glared. "Fine! So what's option three?"

"Ignore this and hope it all goes away?"

"Ow!" Blaise yelped, as a fourth owl collided with his head on its way in. "I don't think people are going to _let_ us ignore this," he said, glaring at the offending bird.

"Eventually they'll have to lose interest..."

"_Eventually_ can be a long time," Blaise said pointedly.

Harry opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, they were blinded by a flash of light.

"_Witch Weekly_!" Lavender Brown chirped. "Any comments on the love story of the century?"

"Oh, for—" Blaise began, shoving her out. Harry merely let his head drop onto the desk with a dull thud and groaned.

**::**

Blaise's day got even better, when he almost literally ran into his boss when he went to his room to get his coat. He mentally braced himself for yet another tirade.

"I knew you were too pretty to be straight," his boss said with a disconcertingly manic grin.

"_Excuse me_?" Blaise said, scandalised. "Wait. I thought Robards said you were 'not happy'?"

She made a throw-away gesture. "Well, _yes. _I'd put my money on Boot. I'd _never_ have guessed that it would be Potter."

"There is a _betting pool _on my sexuality?" Blaise exclaimed, revolted, followed by a dull, "Never mind, I don't even _want_ to know." The world had obviously gone insane. Or maybe it had always been this way and he had just been too wrapped up in himself to notice.

"How's your spell doing?" she asked, reverting back to her normal 'serious boss'-like self.

He eyed her warily, before replying, "Fine. Great, actually. Solved a few disappearances they'd been working on for about two months." He decided to skip the part where they'd jumped interstellar distances after a run-in with angry Ewoks.

She actually looked impressed. "Any downsides?"

"We-e-ell." He hesitated. "Maybe that the spell needs a lot of focus. Harry accidentally ended up on the North Pole one time. And we nearly got lynched by an angry mob of Death Eaters. But I still think it's easier and less dangerous than Apparition. Some of its built-in safety measures don't seem to work like they should, though."

"I wonder what distracted him," his boss sniggered. Blaise chose to ignore her and started plotting his revenge on Padma.

**::**

"_This_—" Blaise began, jabbing his finger at the _Daily Prophet_ article, "has your fingerprints all over it, Patil."

"It's not _my_ fault people use PensiPic," Padma said sweetly, not at all surprised at his outburst and—Blaise strongly suspected—suppressing a self-satisfied smirk.

"I'm guessing you walked in on Harry—" Padma's eyebrows shot up meaningfully when he used Harry's first name "—and me practising my new spell. You probably thought nothing of it until your _sister_ convinced you otherwise and dragged you to her friends at the _Prophet_."

Padma dropped the innocent façade and now smirked outright. "'Nothing', huh? Yeah, 'nothing' definitely requires rolling around on the floor shirtless."

"We were duelling!"

"Oh, is that what they call it these days?"

"And we were not shirtless!" Blaise ended hotly.

"We both know you prefer my version," Padma said, now smirking outright.

"There's nothing between me and Harry."

"You want there to be, though, don't you?" Padma said. "Don't think people didn't notice, back at the UM."

"I hate you," Blaise snapped, though not with much venom.

**To be continued...**


	6. Chapter five

_**Drops of Jupiter**_**, a Harry/Blaise fic**

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter_ or any of its characters. I also do not own _Torchwood_ or _The Galactic Milieu Series_ or any of their characters. I am not making any money for this; I merely write for the fun of it.

**Word count: **4,000 / 17,000

**Chapter summary:** Wherein Harry and Blaise are seen as role models and someone turns out to be an alien.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

"Great. Let's get out of here. I really can't handle any more owls today," Harry groaned, when Blaise finally got back. "Not even the positive kind."

"You should be glad you _get_ positive ones," Blaise said morosely. "I just got hate mail for apparently having 'corrupted' you. Well, and two letters from wizards telling me they thought I'm totally hot and if I'd care to go for a drink some time."

"Oh?" Harry asked, his expression carefully neutral.

Blaise, in good Slytherin fashion, didn't say anything to put the nagging voice at the back of Harry's head to rest, but instead merely smirked.

Harry scowled. "You know, if this wasn't about us, it'd be pretty funny," he eventually commented. Eyeing the door of the department with apprehension, he added, "We should probably leave separately."

"Or," Blaise grinned, "we could use my spell. No wards against that one yet."

**::**

"So what do we tell him?" Blaise asked when they were standing in front of Kenneth MacDonald's door at the University of Magic campus. After using Efringo to get out of the Ministry, Harry had insisted on Apparating the regular way instead of risking appearing right in front of the poor guy and scaring the hell out of him.

"Good question," Harry said, feeling a bit gloomy. "We don't even know what's happened to her."

"Robards wasn't very informative," Blaise agreed. After a short pause, he added, pensively, "What do you think happened to her?"

"Death Eaters?" Harry suggested. "Although I think we caught most of them and there haven't been any attacks in ages."

"Well, I guess Robards will tell us more at this mysterious meeting."

Harry hmm-ed in agreement and with a sigh finally knocked on the door. If they were right, Kenneth should be in the middle of a free period. As no one they'd asked had seen him, Harry and Blaise had assumed he would probably be in his room.

They were proven right, when a voice yelled, "Just a minute!"

And indeed, about a minute later, the door opened, revealing a rather dishevelled-looking blond. "Sorry, I was... busy," he said, looking at them inquisitively. His eyes flashed quickly between Harry and Blaise, reminding Harry uncomfortably of the fact that probably 99.9 per cent of the Wizarding World had read the dreaded article.

"Harry Potter, from the Auror Office, and Blaise Zabini, from Spell Development," Harry—completely unnecessarily—introduced themselves to him. If Kenneth wouldn't have recognised them before, _The Daily Prophet_ article surely would have changed that. "Can we come in? We have some news about your mother."

"Oh!" A mix of shock and hope crossed his features. "Ehm, yes, of course, come in."

Harry and Blaise followed him into the small room Kenneth shared with one other person, who, it seemed, also had a free period, as he was sitting on one of the beds.

Kenneth looked at them with a mixture of hopefulness and trepidation.

Harry looked in what he hoped was a meaningful way in the direction of the other bloke.

The dark-haired bloke seemed to get the hint and glanced questioningly at Kenneth, who quickly said, "No, stay. Please." He sat down next to the bloke and, turning to Harry and Blaise, he added, "Whatever news you have, Luc can hear it."

And then Harry added two and two together. He shared a look with Blaise, who it seemed had come to the same conclusion. He cleared his throat. "Erm, right, then. So, er, the good news is that your mother has been found and is very much alive."

A huge smile broke out on Kenneth's face. It was soon replaced by a small frown of worry. "The good news. So what is the bad news?"

Harry subconsciously looked at Blaise for support. He hated being the bringer of bad news.

Blaise took pity on him. "It would seem that she has lost part of her memory and magic. We're not sure yet what has caused it and how permanent her condition is."

"_Merlin_," Kenneth whispered. He pulled himself together and asked, "When can I see her?"

"She's in St. Mungos now; you can visit her this afternoon."

Kenneth face lit up and he looked at Luc, who smiled back and squeezed his hand.

Harry glanced at Blaise, but Blaise wasn't looking at him. He cleared his throat again. "All right. So, if you have any more questions...?" At Kenneth's negative, he continued, "As soon as we know more, we'll contact you."

Kenneth walked with them to the door. Just before Harry opened it, Kenneth blurted out, "Is it true? The article, I mean?"

Harry froze and exchanged a look with Blaise, whose expression clearly said, 'You figure it out, this time.'

"Um," he began. "Partly?" he finished lamely. He didn't have to look at Blaise to know that Blaise had raised his eyes heavenward in exasperation.

Kenneth, who seemed a bit embarrassed after his own outburst, said, "I, ehm, just wanted to say... thanks, I guess? It's not, ehm, easy. Especially for Purebloods like Luc."

"Er, you're welcome?" Harry said.

When the door had closed, he leaned back against the wall and groaned. "Great, now we're _role models_, too." After a second's thought, he added, "And we're not even sleeping together."

Blaise looked at him sharply, but didn't say anything until they had left the university building and were crossing the ring of wood surrounding it. "Would this bother you less if we were?" he said eventually, his face unreadable.

"Maybe," Harry admitted. "But I know you don't—" _want me back_.

"Yeah, well," Blaise said, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Harry abruptly halted and looked at him. "What are you saying?" He didn't dare to hope that Blaise was actually saying what he thought Blaise was saying.

"I—" Blaise began, but was distracted by an insistent beeping noise. "It's nearly twelve."

_Blaise and his stupid charmed watch! _Harry thought murderously and resisted the urge to bang his head against the nearest tree. "What's at twelve?"

"Weekly Spell Developers lunch," Blaise replied. "We talk a bit about our spells and the progress we've made that week."

"Sounds brilliant," Harry said sullenly.

To his surprise, Blaise grinned. "You're pouting," he teased.

"I am not!" he protested half-heartedly, but he found himself grinning back.

"See you at the meeting," Blaise said and briefly touched his hand, before drawing up a portal and vanishing.

Harry grinned stupidly at the now-empty space. Maybe there was hope after all.

**::**

'See you at the meeting?' Yeah, right. By half past two, Harry ran out of patience and took the lift to the floor that hosted the Spell Development Centre.

When he was in front of Blaise's door, he hesitated. Would this be pushing Blaise too much? And he wasn't even really sure Blaise had changed his mind.

He knocked on the door anyway.

"Come in."

He took a deep breath and opened the door. "Hey," he said, quietly.

"Harry." Blaise's eyes darted up quickly.

"Can I come in?" he asked, tentatively.

Blaise nodded, and Harry went to sit on his desk, making sure he wasn't sitting on any important rune structures. And at a safe distance of Blaise, of course. (Weeell, 'safe' might be a bit too big a word. _Some_ distance, at least.)

"So, uh, how was lunch?" he ventured eventually.

A grin tugged at the corners Blaise's mouth. "Fascinating," he said mock-seriously. "Although none of the other spells are quite as brilliant as Efringo, of course. They were _very _impressed with our results, by the way."

"You're such a Slytherin, some times," Harry said, but he smiled as he said it.

Blaise smirked. "Sorry," he said, sounding not at all apologetic.

"I missed you, you know," Harry suddenly blurted out.

Blaise didn't make any jokes about it only having been two and a half hours since they'd last seen each other, but said, "I missed you, too." He rose from his chair and sat on this desk next to Harry, moving his hand so it was touching Harry's.

"I wanted to apologise, but then I saw you with Terry and—" Harry broke off.

Blaise huffed a short, mirthless laugh. "Yeah, well. I guess I just wanted to hurt you back. I'm sorry." This time his apology did sound sincere.

"We were both morons, weren't we?" Harry said. "I didn't want to lose you, but I also didn't want everyone to find out I'm even more of a freak than they thought, so I tried to convince myself it was for the best."

"On the Freak Index, I think lightning-shaped scars score much higher than being gay, you know," Blaise said, nudging him playfully.

"Oi! I'm trying to have a serious conversation about _feelings_ here!" Harry exclaimed, mock-insulted, and nudged Blaise back.

Blaise slid off the desk and stood in front of Harry. "Let's just agree we're not going to hurt each other like that again, yeah?" he finally said, almost sounding shy when he looked Harry in the eyes.

"Works for me," Harry breathed, and then they finally closed the distance between them.

**::**

"Seems like you're making a habit out of this," a vaguely familiar voice said, when they appeared in what they had assumed to be Robards' office—or at least very near it—but which turned out to be a secluded corner in a Muggle pub. They had been a bit late, so instead of walking to Robards' office, they had used Efringo, hoping the built-in safeguards would prevent them from ending up in the office itself. No such luck, though.

"You!" Harry exclaimed when he recognised Captain Harkness, this time with a blond bloke Harry didn't recognise.

Robards looked at him, eyebrow raised. Harry had a feeling they—or at least Blaise—would be hearing more about this 'appearing in front of Muggles' thing.

"You've met Mr. Harkness—"

"_Captain_ Harkness, actually," the Muggle said with a smirk, leaning back comfortably.

"—_Captain _Harkness, before, under rather unusual circumstances," Robards said. Harry had had no choice but to mention the Muggles in the Welsh mine, especially when it turned out Viola MacDonald had disappeared again. He had left out the bit where he and Blaise had performed magic right under the Muggles' noses, though.

"He and Mr. Simmonds here are with—" it looked as if it physically pained Robards to say this, "—an organisation that catches aliens."

Harkness nodded cheerfully. "That's right."

Robards' expression became even more pained. "He believes your spell has ripped a hole in time and space and that our Ministry has been infiltrated by aliens."

Harry couldn't help himself. "Based on _what_?" Okay, except for the Ewoks, obviously.

"We've been detecting strange energy readings for about two months now," the blond technician said, opening what Harry was reasonably sure was called a laptop and showing them some graphs Harry couldn't make sense of at all. Robards and Blaise just stared suspiciously at the piece of Muggle technology.

"And interestingly enough," Harkness added, "these energy peaks are correlated to your spell."

Blaise shot him a worried glance. Was Harkness going to tell Robards about how they had helped Harkness and his companions escape from the mine?

"The very first peak took place on July the 17th, which we have been informed was the day the spell in question was used for the first time," Simmonds said, pointing at one of his graphs. "After that, we detected frequent energy peaks that looked very similar, three of which occurred when you were at the mine."

"After you left, we returned to the mine and freed Mrs. MacDonald," Harkness continued his co-worker's tale. "Unfortunately, her memories were a bit hazy, so she couldn't tell us much about who or what had gotten her there. Medical tests showed that her energy had been drained."

"At St. Mungos Mediwitches confirmed she has lost part of her magic," Robards added.

"Is that why we couldn't find her?" Harry asked. "Blaise's spell should have taken us straight to her, but I couldn't open a portal."

"Our base is heavily protected," Harkness said. "It's impossible to teleport into it."

"Your spell probably bends space to bring beginning and end point towards each other; our technology makes it impossible to get a fix on the end point," Simmonds explained.

Harry didn't really understand, but the explanation seemed to make sense to Blaise, who nodded thoughtfully.

Harkness continued. "So our conclusion was, that your spell must rip a hole in time and space, which allowed aliens to slip through. They needed energy to sustain themselves here, so they took it from her. And probably those other people."

"But you didn't catch her captors?" Harry asked.

Harkness, for the first time, seemed slightly uncomfortable. "They, ah, seemed to be unusually sensitive to our stun guns."

Robards shot Harkness an unimpressed look. "In other words, he killed them."

"_Anyway_," Harkness continued, ignoring Robards' look. "We believe they weren't the only two. More of them may have slipped through."

"And you think they're at the Ministry," Harry stated.

"If they need magic to survive, it would make sense," Blaise said, shrugging.

"We heard about the incident with the transportation device," Harkness said. "Maybe they hoped that if you were forced to teleport back over interstellar distances, the resulting hole in time and space would be big enough to let all their friends through."

"But if Blaise's spell rips a hole in space and time, shouldn't Portkeys and Apparition do the same?" Robards asked, sceptically.

"Not necessarily," Blaise said slowly, trying to organise his thoughts. "The theory on Apparition and Portkeying isn't very clear, but with Apparition, the mind of the wizard links the magical layer to the physical layer at points A and B, after which the magical layer contracts, bringing points A and B next to each other. Then he can simply step from point A to point B. In Portkeying, it's the Portkey that links the two layers and then basically pulls the person using it from A to B. In both cases, the 'hole' in time and space is very localised in time and space, whereas Efringo creates a bigger portal that exists for a longer time."

Harry stared at Blaise blankly. He and theoretical magic were not a very good combination, as the theory part of his Auror training had proven.

"Your terminology is different from ours," Simmonds said, "but I think you're right."

"Normally, we would just infiltrate in your organisation ourselves, but as we don't have magic, we wouldn't be able to get into your Ministry. So we need your help in finding the alien," Harkness said.

"It would have to be someone new, wouldn't it? Two months, maximum," Robards said.

"Probably, yes," Harkness nodded. "But there are other ways to get to Earth, for example our very own Rift in Cardiff. Someone may have slipped through ages ago and just have waited until the opportunity arose."

"So it could be anyone, really. Well, anyone with access to the Auror Portkeys," Harry said.

"Which leaves all Aurors and most of the higher-ranking staff," Robards said. "Is there any way you can tell if someone is an—" he grimaced "—alien?"

"We did some blood tests on the other two, and we isolated a few compounds that aren't found in human blood," Harkness explained.

"Can't we just use Blaise's spell to take us to their leader?" Harry suggested.

"You can't!" Blaise exclaimed. "For one, that's a really vague description, and two: what if the person we're looking for isn't actually their leader and we end up—oh, I don't know—on a space ship or a different planet? We might not be as lucky as last time."

"Can't you just stick your head through, take a look at what's on the other side, come back and close the portal?" Simmonds inquired.

"I'd prefer not to use this spell again, but if this works it's probably the quickest way to find our alien," Harkness said. "I like Jake's idea. We'll just stick a camera through, take a photo and see who or what is on the other side. If we're fast enough, it should be safe."

**::**

Fifteen minutes later, in an abandoned warehouse, Blaise against better judgement focussed on 'their leader' and opened a portal.

Harkness stuck his hand through the portal and took a few photo's, before pulling his hand back.

Blaise closed the portal and Simmonds opened his laptop. In less than a minute, he had connected it to the camera and the photos were on the screen.

Harry's mouth fell open. "But that—"

"It's my boss!" Blaise exclaimed.

Harkness calmly said, "Can you bring her in? She probably knows we're on to her now."

"I'll go," Robards said. "Potter, you're with me."

Harry nodded and they Disapparated.

**::**

When he and Robards had arrived at the Ministry, they rushed towards the third floor, to Amelia Smith's office.

To their surprise, she was simply waiting for them, her feet on the desk. "Game over, isn't it?" she said when they came in.

"Yes," Robards replied simply. "We need you to come with us."

Robards took her wand (Harry wondered if that would actually make a difference, considering she wasn't actually human—who knew what she could do?), but as she seemed to be cooperating, he did not bind her hands or anything. More likely, Harry mused, Robards still didn't quite believe she was an alien, despite her admission.

Both holding one of her arms, they Apparated back to the warehouse.

Ten minutes later, Harry and Blaise were sitting on a box in the warehouse, watching Blaise's boss's interrogation by Harkness and Robards on Simmonds' laptop.

::

HARKNESS: Name and planet of origin?

AMELIA SMITH: You wouldn't be able to pronounce it.

HARKNESS: Try me.

AMELIA: [some indistinct words that seemed to consist entirely of consonants, mostly the X]

HARKNESS: That planet only exists in mythology. Try again.

AMELIA: I didn't say I got here directly from there. My people were banished to the Void thousands of years ago and [unpronounceable name] was destroyed.

HARKNESS: When did you get here?

AMELIA: Slightly more than three years ago.

HARKNESS: When Torchwood One opened a rift in London.

AMELIA: [affirms]

HARKNESS: Why didn't others of your species come through?

AMELIA: They'd given up. But I hadn't, I kept looking for a way out. So when the opportunity arose, I took it.

HARKNESS: And you've been trying to free the others since then?

AMELIA: [shrugs] At first I just tried to blend in. To sustain myself here, I needed magic. So it seemed logical to try to blend in in their world. I took the identity of one of my victims, a bright young thing. Using her memories and capacities, I eventually ended up as Head of the Department of Spell Development.

HARKNESS: Where you bided your time.

AMELIA: Yes. Until the day Zabini first tested that new spell of his. I could _smell_ the ruptures in the space-time continuum. And I knew this was the opportunity I'd been waiting for.

::

Until that moment, Harry hadn't realised the full extent of what Blaise's spell could have caused. Who knows how many aliens could have come through and how many people they could have killed?

Next to him, Blaise was staring at the screen as if transfixed.

Harry moved his hand so that his hand was touching Blaise's.

Blaise didn't look at him, but he entwined his fingers with Harry's.

::

AMELIA: At first, his spell wasn't localised well and tore a relatively large hole in the fabric of reality. Two of my brothers managed to slip through. Unfortunately, Zabini improved his spell. [sighs] So... I fiddled with Potter's Portkey, hoping they'd use it and that the jump back would tear a hole large enough for everyone to come through.

HARKNESS: Including the Daleks and Cybermen!

AMELIA: [shrugs] Your Doctor seems quite capable of handling them.

HARKNESS: That is quite a bit of a gamble.

AMELIA: Oh well, it's not like the cracks were that big. My brothers hardly even succeeded.

::

"What are the Daleks and Cybermen?" Blaise asked Jake Simmonds.

"I've never actually seen them myself, although apparently a version of me in a parallel universe was fighting against the Cybermen, but basically they are just very, very dangerous robots," Simmonds replied. "They don't have any emotions. The Daleks want to kill everything that isn't Dalek, and the Cybermen try to 'upgrade' everyone to Cybermen, which I think involves transplanting the brain to a metal body."

"_Merlin_," Harry said.

"What would've happened if they had come through?" Blaise asked, apparently wanting to know the entire extent of the disaster his spell might have caused.

Simmonds shrugged. "You'd probably either be dead or a Cyberman."

Meanwhile, the interrogation continued.

::

ROBARDS: Why couldn't you just use Zabini's spell yourself?

AMELIA: I'm good with theoretical magic, but I'm not actually all that strong. Probably because I need a large part of my—well, it's not mine, really—magic just to stay alive.

ROBARDS: So how did you manage that Portkey?

AMELIA: I'm not _completely_ incompetent. It's turning something into a Portkey that's difficult; changing its end point is not that hard.

HARKNESS: Your two... brothers are the only other ones who slipped through?

AMELIA: [affirms] Where are they? I assume you've caught them, too.

HARKNESS: They're dead.

::

"He really is very subtle, isn't he?" Harry said, shaking his head.

::

AMELIA: You _killed_ them?

HARKNESS: 'Kill' is such a big word.

AMELIA: You _bastard_. They didn't do any harm!

ROBARDS: Except kidnapping people and taking their magic.

AMELIA: Well... [pause] So what are you going to do to me? Kill me, too?

HARKNESS: We can't send you back to the Void, so we'll have to lock you up.

AMELIA: I'd rather kill myself.

**::**

"Normally we would use retcon to make you forget all this happened, but I guess you want to do the same to us," Harkness said after he and Simmonds had bound Amelia Smith's hands and put her in their big black car. Blaise thought the flashing blue lights were a bit over the top.

Robards nodded. "We're in the same situation."

"Then we'll agree not to blab about the Wizarding World, and you don't mention the aliens," Harkness said.

"Deal."

Robards and Harkness shook hands and Harkness got in the car.

"Well, that was... interesting," Robards sighed, when the car had rounded the corner.

"What are you going to tell the rest?" Harry asked.

"What _can_ I tell them? We'll just say we found Mrs. MacDonald back, but don't know what happened to her because of her memory loss."

"And what about the Department of Spell Development?" Blaise wondered.

Robards was about to reply when his eyes fell on the end of the street and he froze. "Oh no," he groaned. "It's the _Prophet_."

Rita Skeeter and a photographer came just hurrying round the corner. "Mr. Robards!" she exclaimed. "Is it true you've just arrested Amelia Smith? And what's with all the rumours about aliens?"

"We could give them something more interesting to write about?" Harry suggested with a mischievous grin.

Blaise rolled his eyes and sighed theatrically. "You really overestimate your own importance some times, you know that, right?"

He was proven wrong when Rita Skeeter was near enough to see them where they were still standing in front of the Muggle pub, hidden from plain view. "Harry! And Zabini!" She nearly squealed in delight.

"So, option two, then?" Harry grinned, looking at Blaise and offering his hand.

"But I don't want to adopt a gazillion babies!" Blaise said, pretending to be shocked, before breaking out in a grin and taking Harry's hand. "'Madly in love', I can live with, though."

**To be concluded...**


	7. Epilogue

**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Harry Potter, Torchwood, Galactic Milieu, Star Wars_ or any other of the books or TV shows referenced in this story or any of their characters. I'm just writing for the fun of it and not making any money for this.

**Word count: **2,000 / 17,000

**Author's note:** This epilogue can also be read in 'actual newspaper format' as PNG at my LiveJournal community or as PDF at the HarryxBlaise Yahoo Group. (Also available to non-members.) There's a link on my profile page.

(For a complete header including warnings and classifications, see the prologue.)

**::**

**_Potter & Zabini: "The truth about our relationship."_**

**Harry Potter and Blaise Zabini caused quite a fuss in the Wizarding World a few weeks ago when **_**The Daily Prophet**_** suggested they were in a relationship, as was confirmed one week later. **_**The Quibbler**_** had an exclusive interview with them to find out the truth about their relationship—and why PensiPic should not be trusted.**

_By Parvati Patil_

I meet up with Potter and Zabini at The Leaky Cauldron. Despite all the commotion of the last few weeks and the looks they are getting now, they seem very much at ease, with each other and with the situation.

"I've had much worse," Potter laughs.

Zabini merely shrugs. "When I started dating Harry, I knew this was likely to happen at some point. It bothered me more when the rumours were just that: rumours."

Potter nods. "Yeah, it's never fun when the media tell lies about you. Of course this wasn't comparable to the time when the _Prophet_ called me a madman and a compulsive liar, but still. No fun."

Zabini adds: "And now they also have PensiPic. That first photograph was a good example of how inaccurate that procedure can be."

Potter laughs. "Yeah, I most definitely do not have a tattoo of a Snitch on my back."

When asked whether he could confirm that, Zabini merely raises an eyebrow and smirks. I think we can safely assume that the answer is 'yes'.

PensiPic, although not always accurate, always has a basis in reality, which brings to mind the question: What were they really doing?

Potter scratches his head, grinning sheepishly. "We, er, were duelling. We were working together on a project that week. It was pretty late when we got back from a case so we didn't have enough time to do anything useful."

Zabini grins and adds: "And no, 'duelling' is not a euphemism for other things. The person who saw us—" he looks at me meaningfully, but I'm sure I haven't any idea what he is on about; it certainly didn't have anything to do with my sister who is a Spell Developer, "—seems to have a very vivid imagination. We were both fully clothed, I assure you."

Potter: "And there was no snogging."

Zabini: "That would have been very unprofessional."

Potter: "Yeah, we would never do such a thing."

Their matching grins —and various eyewitness accounts—suggest otherwise.

**On their time at the UM**

Returning to Zabini's comment about 'dating Harry', does this mean the persistent rumour Potter and Zabini were already seeing each other when Potter was training for Auror and Zabini studying at the University of Magic is true?

Potter grimaces comically. "And here I was thinking we'd been discreet."

Zabini snickers.

"_Anyway_," Potter continues. "As part of my Auror training, I had to learn some basic rune magic, which is useful in cases when you somehow lose your wand. Blaise, of course, was studying Theoretical Magic at that time and assisted the Rune Magic teacher. I was failing horribly and he offered to help me. And then, well." They smile at each other.

"My motives were entirely pure, of course," Zabini says. "Rune magic, if used incorrectly, can be very dangerous."

"Yeah, what was it again? Something about 'accidentally ripping a hole in the space-time continuum'? A bit ironic, really." Potter snickers.

"Don't laugh!" Zabini elbows Potter playfully. "Rune magic is Serious Business—with capital letters S and B."

**On falling for each other**

One of our readers remarked that "Potter and Zabini, they're about the most unlikely couple one could possibly imagine." The mutual hatred between Gryffindors and Slytherins is legendary, although lately the differences between the Houses seem to be getting smaller. And then there is that Potter used to date girls, most notably Ginny Weasley.

When asked what attracted him to Zabini, Potter raises an eyebrow. "Do you have any idea how sexy rune magic is? I never stood a chance."

Zabini rolls his eyes.

Potter, more seriously: "I can't really pinpoint the moment I fell for him, it was such a gradual process." He laughs. "When I finally realised that I was attracted to him, it was quite a bit of a shock! Before Blaise, I'd never looked at another bloke that way."

At Zabini's raised eyebrow, he adds: "Cedric doesn't count! Everybody, male or female, fancied him. Besides, I didn't _fancy_ him, I _admired_ him. Yeah."

Zabini seems unconvinced.

"For me it was a bit less of a shock, except for the 'Gryffindor thing', obviously," he says, making quotation marks. "Of course I had noticed him at Hogwarts—who hadn't?—but never that way."

**On their break-up**

Potter and Zabini, who have been remarkably open thus far, are much less talkative about their break-up. ("No comment!") As a good reporter, I of course had to ask them about a rumour involving a certain Ravenclaw.

Zabini glowers. "If you're suggesting I cheated on Harry, the answer is 'no'."

It seems the mystery of their break-up will have to remain a mystery for a bit longer.

**On their coming-out**

When asked if they got a lot of reactions after the _Prophet_ article, Zabini snorts. "Are you kidding? I'm still deaf from all the Howlers."

Potter: "He's exaggerating, of course. But there were quite a lot of Howlers, yeah. The Wizarding World isn't always the most tolerant place. But," he hastens to add, "it wasn't all bad; there were also a lot of positive reactions."

Zabini nods. "Some people even thanked us for coming out, which felt a bit weird, since at the time nothing was going on between us and we definitely didn't 'come out' on purpose."

Potter, thoughtfully: "You know, in the end I think that the _Prophet_ article actually was a good thing. If that hadn't happened, I'm not sure we'd have got back together."

"I'm glad we don't have to bother with all the secrecy this time," Zabini agrees.

Was this secrecy maybe the reason for their break-up? But unfortunately it's time for our last question. Is there anything else they would like to say to the readers of _The Quibbler_?

Potter: "I just want to say thanks to everyone who's supported us. And to the people who are still a bit wary, I'd like to say... I'm still me, you know? Whom I love doesn't change anything about that."

It's love, then?

They look at each other.

Potter: "I think so, yeah."

Zabini nods. "Definitely feels like the real deal." ■

**The end**

::

So, that's the end of this story! Thanks for reading! I had loads of fun writing it; I hope you liked reading it! Feedback is very welcome, as it helps me improve my writing.


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